Little Giant is the most unusual Abbott&Costello film ever made with Bud and Lou not functioning as a team per se. They did one other film like that for Universal at the time. According to the Bob Thomas book on the team the two were close to breaking up at the time and it was decided to treat them separately. Eventually things were patched up.

Bud has a dual role as the evil general manager of the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner company who's been skimming off the books to pay for his expensive, but secret wife Jacqueline DeWit. His other roles is as his own cousin and branch manager of the Stockton office of the said company. Bud as the cousin has a girlfriend in secretary Brenda Joyce.

Not enough is said about Bud's acting here in two fairly straight roles because he got lost in the praise for Lou Costello's best show of pathos. Little Giant is the film where he is fairly compared with such silent screen comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon, or Roscoe Arbuckle. If Little Giant had been a silent film, any one of these comic greats could have done the Costello role. Lou measures up to all of them here.

Lou's a simple kid from the farm who's taken a correspondence course in salesmanship and wants to be a vacuum cleaner salesman in the tradition of his uncle George Cleveland. With the best wishes of his mother Mary Gordon, Lou goes off to Los Angeles to get a job with the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner company.

Costello's various adventures both on the job and amorous show him at his best as an innocent. Not even Stan Laurel ever responded to vamping the way Lou does with Jacqueline DeWit.

Today's viewers will not get the joke, but Costello's character Benny Miller coming from Cucamonga was a guaranteed laugh every time the town was mentioned. It took years for the town to live down its reputation as a place for hicks, but that was as a result of the Jack Benny Show and the famous announcement that occurred every so often in one of the broadcasts about a train leaving for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga. Imagine that with every letter Cucamonga enunciated to the fullest. When you got off at Cucamonga you were in the equivalent of Hooterville. And Costello's very character was a typical Cucamonga resident as the Jack Benny Show told the world.

For the biggest and most successful extension of Lou Costello's range as a comedian, one should view Little Giant.

Going against their usual formula of slapstick, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are barely funny in this post-war comedy that seems to focus more on pathos then on gags. More naive than dumb, Lou is a small town buffoon who ends up in the big city selling the Hercules, the newest contraption for home cleaning and for some reason begins to think that he has the ability to read minds. But Abbott is the head of the vacuum cleaner company, and has very little to do. Well comedy teams often took the different steps to change their image or type of material, in the case of Bud and Lou, it really didn't work. A lot of the gags are familiar, including one involving a math problem that I am sure I saw in a Wheeler and Woolsey comedy that was most likely made a decade before this.

This is strictly for Abbott and Costello fans, and even they might be slightly disappointed in the change of format. This certainly is not in the league with the two Fuller Brush movies made with famous comic redheads just a few years later, although there are attempts to toss in gags that would be perfected in those two Columbia classics. There is one amusing sequence with Margaret Dumont as a befuddled society matron (what else?) where Lou practically destroys her gorgeous all white living room, all white that is until he gets there.

In spite of the disappointing changing format, there is a great supporting cast, most notably Mary Gordon as Lou's devoted mama, George Cleveland as his uncle who made it big in the bug city and might be country bound if Lou doesn't work out and Jacqueline DeWit as a statuesque vamp who slips into something more comfortable in order to get Lou to do her bidding. This ends up being a missed opportunity that might have worked for Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in the early 1930's but lands with a thud in post war times. If Hercules held up the world with this, Zeus would have disowned him.

This is one of Abbott and Costello's most unusual films, as it's the first of two that made where the characters were NOT friends. In addition, Bud Abbott plays dual roles--one a nice enough guy and the other a total scum-bag! Plus, and here's the oddest part, the film is a traditional story in many ways-as both play honest-to-goodness people! As a result, it really isn't a comedy per se--as the film is not built around gags but people. Sure, there are a few laughs here and there, but that is all.

While I know that the film was a bit of a flop and many people disliked its style, I frankly liked it because it was such a departure. You see, by 1946, the team had already made 16 films in only 6 years--and all but one of them (WHO DONE IT!) followed roughly the same formula. With this formula, there was a love story, some Abbott and Costello comedy and lots of singing. As far as the love story goes, this time it actually involves Lou and a girl back home. However, there is no singing and little what anyone would consider comedy.

I think one thing that bothered people is the pathos in the film. Lou plays a nice guy who gets hurt pretty badly at times in the film. You want him to win but time and again, jerks take advantage of him. Near the very end, this hit practically epic proportions, though smartly, the film didn't stay mired too long in pathos--coming to a nice and quick resolution.

The film begins with Lou living on the farm with his Mom. He wants to make good, so he's been taking a correspondence course in salesmanship. Unfortunately, he isn't very good at it and when he goes to the big city to make his mark, he makes a mess of it. He loses his job and gets another job with the same vacuum cleaner company in another town. However, in an odd twist, his co-workers play a joke on him--convincing him he's psychic. The gag works too well, as Lou is convinced it's real. The jokes on them when he turns into an amazing salesman--setting a sales record the very next day.

As for Bud, in Los Angeles, he plays a crooked and thoroughly nasty jerk. He takes pleasure in firing Lou and it's interesting to see them working against each other instead of with each other. In his next job, Lou goes to work for Bud's cousin--played once again by Bud (with a slightly different hairdo). This time, he's more of a normal guy and confides in Lou that he can't stand his stupid cousin in L.A.! It was an interesting acting challenge for Bud--as rarely did any of his characters in other film have any depth. Here, he plays two parts and quite well. In fact, it worked out well enough that they had him do the same in the next film, THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES. Another, more practical reason they did this was because Bud and Lou were having a horrible spat at the time--and they would only play in films where they acted separately!! Fortunately for the team, the managed to patch things up for other films.

One of the only comedy routines in the film was also used in one of the team's earlier films, IN THE NAVY. This is the funny math routine where Lou explains (rather convincingly) that 7x13=21! While it is a retread, it's redone well.

Overall, while this is hated by most people, I liked the film a lot--nearly giving it a 9. Why? Originality and both Bud and Lou stretched themselves--trying new things even if the public wasn't 100% ready for THIS big a change. Maybe much of the reason I respect this film so much is that I have re-seen all the Abbott and Costello films leading up to LITTLE GIANT and it just felt like a breath of fresh air seeing such a completely original film.